Monday, November 07, 2011

Bill Smith's trade history hindered Twins

It was a tumultuous first year for Bill Smith. He had to face the reality
of the face-of-the-franchise Torii Hunter leaving via free agency as well as annual Cy Young candidate Johan Santana making it
known that he wanted to play in a larger market – preferably New York. In the
first few months at the
helm, Smith made two trades that would forever tarnish his reputation in
Minnesota in the fan's eyes.

In November
2007, Smith dealt Matt Garza, Jason Bartlett and Eduardo Morlan to the Tampa Bay Rays in exchange for Delmon Young, Brendan Harris
and Jason Pridie. In efforts to replace Hunter’s right-handed stick, the Twins
purchased the promising Young at a high price. Garza would help fortify the
Rays rotation while Bartlett would boost the Rays defense in the infield. After
receiving 16.2 wins above replacement from Garza and Bartlett, Tampa’s shrewed
front office would move the pair for more prospects and useful parts including
Sam Fuld, Brandon Guyer, Hak-Ju Lee, Cesar Ramos and Adam Russell. Once the
Twins were finished with Young (or rather Young finished with the Twins
depending on who you are asking), Smith was only able to fetch Cole Nelson and
Lester Oliveros. What’s more is that the Twins wound up paying over $2 million
more in salary for their return as well.

Meanwhile, the Santana trade was a poorly timed, poorly executed deal which
is viewed as Smith swapping the cash cow for a pile of beans. While none of the
beans amounted to much, Smith did manage to save over $10 million and only lost
out on 1.2 WAR (only factoring in 2008 for Santana which would have been his
walk year). At the time, reports came in that the Yankees and the Red Sox had
better packages ready (with Jacoby Ellsbury and Jon Lester being some of the
names bantered around), but both teams ultimately rescinded their offers (if
those offers were legit in the first place). Comparatively, Gomez and company
seemed like a sheer fleecing by the Mets and Keith
Law’s analysis had the Mets coming out on top:

“In the abstract, it's hard to accept dealing your marquee
player and top trading asset without getting your partner's top young player in
return, and that's what the Twins did. They did get back significant economic
value in four young players, each of whom has under one year of big-league
service and two of whom aren't even on the Mets' 40-man roster yet, so the
Twins will have each of them under control for six full years of service. That
return in exchange for just one year of Santana's services is reasonable. But
premium players should fetch premium prices, because there's value to a club in
having so much production coming from a single roster spot. And in this case,
Minnesota GMBill Smithdid not get a premium prospect in return.”

In hindsight, Smith failed to get that premium prospect and now most of
the Santana bounty is scattered across baseball. Would have waiting until the
trade deadline open more avenues or create more trade scenarios than the one he
was pigeon-holed into prior to the season?

Even though the Santana-for-Gomez and the Garza-for-Young trades started his
legacy off on the wrong foot, Smith and his team were able to piece together
favorable trades after the more egregious ones. He grabbed Carl Pavano and Jon
Rauch for a pittance. Orlando Cabrera and Brian Fuentes were also exchanged for
little compensation. He landed JJ Hardy for Carlos Gomez. Those moves together
provided the Twins with 6.2 wins above replacement and only “cost” the team roughly
$10 million in added salary.

After the handful of trades that worked towards the Twins favor, Smith
began to execute what would be considered two of the more painful and damaging
trades to the organization.

At the trade deadline in 2010, the Twins bullpen was shallow and in need
of a boost. They targeted the Nationals’ closer Matt Capps. Capps, who was an
All Star that season and performing well for the lowly NL East club, was far
from a dominating arm. He was a step above Jon Rauch, whom the Twins acquired
the year before at the waiver deadline for the flotsam known as Kevin Mulvey.
Only instead of giving up a player of Mulvey’s caliber, the Twins offered up
Wilson Ramos – the Twins top prospect as well as the 58th overall by
Baseball America. With little offensive help at the upper levels, the utter
depletion of the team in 2011 exposed how badly they needed someone like Ramos.
Ramos did quite well for the Nationals – both offensively and defensively. He
hit .267/.334/.445 with 15 home runs in 425 plate appearances. Capps,
meanwhile, who was re-upped for this past season, regressed hard and was beat around
while earning $7 million. While the jury is still out because Ramos’s career is
just beginning, thus far the Twins have lost 3.1 wins above replacement and
have paid over $8 million because of this deal.

While the intentions were never clear – payroll, performance, injury
history, clubhouse mannerisms – the Twins decided that they needed to move on
from shortstop J.J. Hardy. True, he had a shortened season in 2010 but his
second-half numbers were indicitive of an elite player, not to mention at a
very difficult to fulfill position. Whether it was his decision or someone else
in the club’s call, Smith sent Hardy and Harris to Baltimore for a pair of
damaged minor league arms in Jim Hoey and Brett Jacobsen. HoeyJacobsen floundered a bit in the minors
attempting to develop a secondary offering as well. Hardy, on the other hand,
smoked pitches all over Camden Yards armed with health and a new approach to
pull the ball. This move cost the organization 5.2 wins in 2011 but managed to
save $6 million in salary in the process.

While there were some notably disastrous trades made, overall Smith
managed to lose just 10.3 wins above replacement but saved the team $7.67
million after all the wheeling and dealing was done.

Here’s the thing: It is hard to fully evaluate a GM’s tenure. There are no
encompassing metric which neatly ties in free agent signings, trades, minor
league development and amateur draft in a budget-neutralized context. Because
of this, it’s hard to accurately compare the work of one organization to the
next. Is saving almost $8 million in salary over the course of ten trades in
four years good or bad? How about costing your team 10 wins over four seasons?
Is that average for a GM?

Reviewing Smith’s trade track record, it is not hard to see that he
likely has done more harm than good. While he was proficient at adding pieces
in-season, his ability to build for the future through trades was atrocious. It
is this area that newly appointed general manager Terry Ryan was particularly
successful at. During his first administration, Ryan managed to build a
competitive franchise by trading off soon-to-be departing players and the excess fat. With a
system that is currently bottom-heavy and holes abound on the major league roster,
installing someone like Ryan who has been lauded for his ability to extract
talent from other teams is the right decision for the Twins.

5 comments:

In fairness to Smith, the GM does do other things. I like how he improved our international profile, I like pushing Johnson into draft guru over the promoted Radcliff, I think he made a fair number of team friendly contract extensions (Kubel, Baker, Span, Morneau). Smith did a lot to improve Target Field behind the scenes that fans apparently didn't get to know about.

I think he gets too much blame for the Capps/Ramos trade - the team's bullpen and rotation were in a death spiral, the team lost 10games in the standings in a month and Ramos was not doing well in AAA. Comparisons to Miguel Olivo were starting to come out and BA dropped him over 30 spots on their next rankings. His value was falling almost as fast as the Twins were in the standings. Yeah, it looks bad in hindsight but the trade was rated positively by both Jim Callis and John Sickels.

In any event, I think Smith's lack of scouting ability hurt him more than he thought it would. The Twins decision makers were often divided on issues (some thought Nishi could play well in US, some didn't. Some thought Hardy should be moved and the Twins should emphasize speed again. Some didn't. Some think Hicks will be a star and should be untouchable, some didn't. Some thought Pavano should come back, some didn't). Smith didn't have the background to give himself enough advice on those issues so would have to "guess" for lack of a better term.

I'm not looking forward to the payroll falling after 2 straight 3m attendance seasons. I'm not sure Ryan is the best person to handle the Twins new TV contract in a couple years.

"In fairness to Smith, the GM does do other things." -_-_- Yup, I want to make it abundantly clear that there is so much more that goes into being a general manager than simply trades.

As I mentioned in my offseason blueprint last week: " It feels as if there is some common misconception that Bill Smith is making all the offseason decisions by himself in a bubble. True, his position is where the buck stops however Mr. Smith is not alone in the process. He has recommendations and suggestions from various sources within the organization. Some may have one solution for shortstop while another may have a completely different answer for the middle infield problem. The general manager must take all of these ideas into consideration and devise a plan of action."

All of his trades listed in the post likely had the approval of many of the same personnel that are still in the office - most likely even Ryan himself.

This is not a piece to provide an overall review of Smith's body of work. As you said, made some great in-roads to signing international guys but he also made some good offseason signings including Thome and Hudson. We are still a ways out from judging his team's draft results but so far there has not been one graduate to reach the major leagues (that's not a criticism, just an observation).

While he was proficient at adding pieces in-season, his ability to build for the future through trades was atrocious.

I think this had a lot to do with circumstance. With the payroll were it has been, the Twins have been in "win now" mode the last few years. That has meant trading prospects for rental players. They've been consistently competitive, and not in a position to unload veterans.

Overall, I'm not a Bill Smith fan and I'm excited to see what TR will do. But at the same time I think Smith has gotten more blame than he deserves. The blogosphere has quickly forgotten how much they loved him during the offseason before 2010.

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